U.S. IN TALKS WITH INDIA OVER MISSILE DEFENCE TIE-UP

WASHINGTON: The US has discussed a potential missile defence collaboration with India, a top Pentagon official has said, underlining that America wants to build a “much deeper and broader relationship” with the country.

US under secretary of defence for policy John Rood, however, said that it is early to determine how far India, which already has substantial domestic missile defence capabilities, will go regarding the defence collaboration.

“We have talked to the Indians about missile defence as potentially an area as well to collaborate on. It’s early days to determine how far that will go,” Rood said speaking at a think-tank here on Thursday.

“The Indians have substantial capabilities domestically of their own and they’ve done some development of missile defences. So the degree to which they’re interested in acquiring or working collaboratively with us in the US remains to be seen,” Rood said when asked about reports that India is interested in purchasing the THAAD system from the US.

The Obama administration was not very forthcoming in sharing its advance missile defence system with India, following which New Delhi went ahead to procure it from Russia.

The Trump administration seems to be extremely keen to let India procure its missile defence system.